After spending 88 days in jail, during which he staged a hunger strike, Panahi was briefly let out on bail, but his freedom was short-lived. His prison term comes with the edict that he not write any scripts, travel to other countries, nor talk with any member of the local or foreign media for 20 years—essentially a living death sentence for one of the repressive nation’s few vocal challengers. The impact of this on Iran’s filmmaking culture, too, seems likely to be devastating.